What it does
This legislative instrument formally establishes the National Notifiable Disease List for the purposes of subsection 11(1) of the National Health Security Act 2007. The instrument states its name (National Health Security (National Notifiable Disease List) Instrument 2018) in the opening provision (s 1), and records the statutory authority under which it is made, namely section 11 of the National Health Security Act 2007 (s 3). The operative provision is s 6(1), which sets out the list of diseases that, taken together, constitute the National Notifiable Disease List. The instrument also provides a definition mechanism for the abbreviation NEC in s 5 and in subsection 6(2).
Mechanically, the instrument performs a single regulatory function: it identifies and records, in a single textual table, the diseases that are to be treated as the National Notifiable Disease List for the referenced subsection of the Act. The content of that table is the legal output of the instrument. The table lists 65 numbered items (with lettered sub-items such as 9A, 17A, 17A, 27, 28 etc), and includes both specific diseases (for example, Anthrax, Cholera, Smallpox) and categories with qualifiers or scope limitations (for example, "Haemophilus influenzae type b infection,invasive only", "Influenza,laboratory confirmed", "Rubella,including congenital and non‑congenital"). The table also includes entries marked NEC (for example, "Hepatitis (NEC)", "Lyssavirus infection (NEC)"), which are defined by the instrument as meaning "not elsewhere classified in the National Notifiable Disease List" (s 6(2), as referenced in s 5).
The instrument does not, on its face, create reporting duties, enforcement mechanisms, penalties, or operational detail about how notifications are to be made. Instead, it supplies the enumerated list which the National Health Security Act 2007 (and any regulations or subordinate instruments made under that Act) will use in applying the Act's mechanisms. The instrument therefore functions as a definitional or identification instrument: it fixes the set of named diseases which will be treated as "notifiable" for the statutory provision referenced. The instrument is expressed in a way that presupposes the Act will attach obligations to the list; the Act is not reproduced in the instrument.